I walked in here six and a half days ago, I'm walking out

June 21, 2020 5:35 AM

Kristin Enmark was the first person to be diagnosed with Stockholm Syndrome. The story of the bank robbery that originated this diagnosis is familiar to so many of us, filtered through the views of the police who responded to the incident. Less familiar, is the very different story of twenty three year old Enmark herself.
posted by quacks like a duck (26 comments total)

There's definitely a condition where I've stayed with people who are bad for me, but yeah, at that time Kristin Enmark didn't share that condition.
posted by otherchaz at 5:50 AM on June 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

I always thought it was nonsense. Especially when it featured in "Die Hard" as the "Helsinki Syndrome"

("As in Helsinki, Sweden")
posted by chavenet at 6:34 AM on June 21, 2020 [5 favorites]

A bit thin, but Stockholm Syndrome seems to enjoy a life as a pop psychology term used largely by lay people more than anything else, akin to concepts like "multiple personality" etc. More background is easily found on the Wikipedia entry, which includes Jess Hill's take on Enmark and lack of DSM classification. It's often used to describe seemingly paradoxical behavior by victims of abuse/crime/oppression. There are some pretty creepy instances Stockholm Syndrome that seem to defy rational explanation, but Enmark's reaction to her hostage situation isn't one of them.
posted by 2N2222 at 6:42 AM on June 21, 2020 [5 favorites]

I know I'm in the minority but I can't really follow this Twitter wall...where is the important part of the link?
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:21 AM on June 21, 2020 [10 favorites]

That is so interesting and, yes, it's not the only phrase that's wildly popular and not representative of the real situation where it originated; cf. "drink the Kool Aid".
posted by BibiRose at 7:23 AM on June 21, 2020 [7 favorites]

akin to concepts like "multiple personality" etc.

I get what you mean in terms of the pop culture distortion and visibility of the concept, but dissociative identity disorder is real diagnosed thing and something we've had several community members talk openly about as part of their life and their mental health landscape. It'd be good to avoid treating it, even unintentionally, as primarily a pop culture reference.
posted by cortex at 7:26 AM on June 21, 2020 [16 favorites]

where is the important part of the link?

The first tweet contains four screenshots of ebook pages. That's the text.

(I miss the days when all of this stuff was on blogs.)
posted by suetanvil at 7:26 AM on June 21, 2020 [6 favorites]

This also reminds me of the refutation of the Kitty Genovese story (previously, previously, previously) where the police use the media to spin a story of pathological lawbreaking where it does not exist.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 7:28 AM on June 21, 2020 [4 favorites]

The key paragraph from the book excerpt for me is:

On the radio, [the victim] Enmark criticised the police, and singled out [police psychiatrist] Bejerot. In response, and without once speaking to her, Bejerot dismissed her comments as the product of a syndrome he made up: 'Norrmalmstorg syndrome' (later renamed Stockholm syndrome). The fear Enmark felt towards the police was irrational, Bejerot explained, caused by the emotional or sexual attachment she had with her captors. Bejerot's Snap diagnosis suited the Swedish media; they were suspicious of Enmark, who ‘did not appear as traumatised as she ought to be’
posted by ambrosen at 7:29 AM on June 21, 2020 [8 favorites]

The book is called See What You Made Me Do, and is by Jess Hill. It's more broadly about the dynamics of abusive relationships, and the story referenced here shocked the author when she researched it.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 7:30 AM on June 21, 2020 [10 favorites]

I heard about it on the podcast Criminal, which also referred to the book. But it's a good episode. It's shocking, but of course when you think about it more, absolutely not surprising that a professional who worked with the police ignored the woman who didn't just believe him/the police and when she criticized them, pathologized the criticism.
posted by jeather at 7:34 AM on June 21, 2020 [10 favorites]

they were suspicious of Enmark, who ‘did not appear as traumatised as she ought to be’

See also: Lindy Chamberlain, wrongly convicted after an initial media appearance in which she was seen not to be crying properly.
posted by flabdablet at 7:38 AM on June 21, 2020 [8 favorites]

I get what you mean in terms of the pop culture distortion and visibility of the concept, but dissociative identity disorder is real diagnosed thing and something we've had several community members talk openly about as part of their life and their mental health landscape. It'd be good to avoid treating it, even unintentionally, as primarily a pop culture reference.

Which is why I referred to "multiple personality" as pop psychology used by lay people, rather than DID. For better or worse, it's still thought of as synonymous with seriously flawed media representations like Sybil or Three Faces of Eve. Similarly, what's described as Stockholm Syndrome often seems associated with well documented mental health conditions such as PTSD.

I think that's the key here. Psychological concepts have sometimes taken on a life of their own based on dubious incidences that were erroneously understood, yet enthusiastically digested by the public at large.
posted by 2N2222 at 7:53 AM on June 21, 2020 [8 favorites]

How surprising and utterly not surprising.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:57 AM on June 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

tiny frying pan: I know I'm in the minority but I can't really follow this Twitter wall...where is the important part of the link?

You have to click on the pictures. Here are direct links that might work:

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4
posted by clawsoon at 8:08 AM on June 21, 2020 [5 favorites]

...wrongly convicted after an initial media appearance in which she was seen not to be crying properly.

I've sat on juries, and it's shocking/not shocking just how rigidly some people hold to the notion that, if the defendant isn't acting in exactly the narrowly-defined manner I say they should, they obviously are lying/guilty.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:12 AM on June 21, 2020 [17 favorites]

Tiny frying pan: in the twitter thread following the post it was noted by a person who is blind that they can't read images in twitter with their reader.
Someone helpfully linked the google books clip of the same text, which may be easier for those who'd rather read a book that the twitter format.
posted by chapps at 8:28 AM on June 21, 2020 [4 favorites]

Thanks for the link, I think I'll order this book!
posted by chapps at 8:29 AM on June 21, 2020

A bit thin, but Stockholm Syndrome seems to enjoy a life as a pop psychology term used largely by lay people more than anything else, akin to concepts like "multiple personality" etc.

Unfortunately, the term "folk psychology" has a usage in philosophy and cognitive science (although probably no one outside those fields cares!), because it would be perfect to denote this kind of thing.
posted by thelonius at 8:51 AM on June 21, 2020 [1 favorite]

In other words, the origin of Stockholm Syndrome was (male) experts gaslighting (female) victims.
posted by cheshyre at 10:00 AM on June 21, 2020 [7 favorites]

So to summarise: a twenty three year old woman ended up a hostage in a bank robbery. She befriended her captors and assessed the situation. Worrying for her safety in light of the poorly organised police response, she GOT HERSELF ON LIVE RADIO in order to publically call out the police. Not content with that, she then called the actual Prime Minister, from inside the bank where she was a hostage, to try and negotiate a resolution.

Once the hostage situation was over, she refused to leave the building on a stretcher as some kind of casualty, but walked out on her own two feet.

Then, the men who she had embarrassed took advantage of their privilege to make everyone aware that her bravery, her actions and her account of the situation was all entirely the result of some kind of personal pathology of hers, akin to a mental illness. And the entire world has told the story that way ever since.

The whole story resonates with me so much, due to the experiences of my own mother whose actions and opinions were dismissed in a very similar way for most of her life due to her (actual existing in this case) mental health problem.

[Apologies for the difficulties in reading the text and thanks to those who found a slightly better version!]
posted by quacks like a duck at 11:10 AM on June 21, 2020 [36 favorites]

Great summary, quacks like a duck. Maybe she trusted her captors more than the police and PM because the PM literally told her that if the police killed her that'd be okay:

"But you know, [Prime Minister] Olof [Palme], what I'm scared of is that the police will attack and cause us to die." Palme refused to let her leave, saying they could not give in to the demands of criminals. At the end of the conversation, Enmark says Palme said, "Well, Kristin, you can't get out of the bank. You will have to content yourself that you will have died at your post." Enmark was appalled, telling Palme, "I don't want to be a dead hero."

posted by clawsoon at 1:27 PM on June 21, 2020 [7 favorites]

Adding to favorites, wish I didn't need this as a resource for others, know I will need it.
posted by winesong at 1:33 PM on June 21, 2020

Full text, if anyone is still having trouble with the images or Google Books:

Nothing exposes the mythical thinking behind learned helplessness better than Stockholm syndrome: a diagnosis assigned to women who show affection for their captors, and a distrust of authority. It’s a classic throw-away line we use to describe the mental condition of domestic abuse victims, but it’s also a term that’s still taken seriously by some psychologists. ‘A classic example [of Stockholm syndrome] is domestic violence,’ says Oxford psychologist Jennifer Wild, ‘when someone – typically a woman – has a sense of dependency on her partner and stays with him.’

But Stockholm syndrome – a dubious pathology with no diagnostic criteria – is riddled with misogyny and founded on a lie.16 The psychiatrist who invented it, Nils Bejerot, never spoke to the woman he based it on; never bothered to ask her why she trusted her captors more than the authorities. More to the point, during the Swedish bank heist that inspired the syndrome, Bejerot was the psychiatrist leading the police response. He was the authority that Kristin Enmark – the first woman diagnosed with Stockholm syndrome – distrusted.

Enmark was twenty-three when, one morning in 1973, Jan Olsson walked into a bank in Norrmalmstorg and took her and three other clerks hostage. Over the next six days, the audacious heist became a blockbuster media event. Swedes had never seen anything like it, and neither had the police.

With no training in hostage negotiation, the police response was ham-fisted from the start. Early in the siege, they misidentified Olsson and, thinking they had found his younger brother, sent a teenage boy into the bank to negotiate, accompanied by Nils Bejerot, only to have Olsson shoot at him. As Olsson became more and more agitated, his accomplice, Clark Olofsson, whose release from jail was one of Olsson’s first demands, reassured the hostages. ‘[Clark] comforted me, he held my hand,’ Enmark recalled in 2016. ‘He said, “I want to see that Jan doesn’t hurt you.” I can’t say that I felt safe, because that’s not the word, but I chose to believe him. He meant very much to me, because I thought that somebody cared about me. But there was no affection in that way. In some way, he gave me hope that, this is going to end okay.’

There was no such reassurance from the police. Enmark asked to speak to Bejerot, but he refused. In a live radio interview from the bank, she blew up at the authorities. ‘[The police] are playing with … our lives. And then they don’t even want to talk to me, who is the one who will die if anything happens.’ Sensing that their likelihood of survival was getting slimmer by the hour, Enmark took matters into her own hands. She called the Swedish prime minister, Olof Palme, and begged him to let her and another hostage leave the bank with their captors. ‘I fully trust Clark and the robber,’ she told Palme. ‘I am not desperate. They haven’t done a thing to us. On the contrary, they have been very nice. But you know, Olof, what I’m scared of is that the police will attack and cause us to die.’ Palme refused to let her leave, saying they could not give in to the demands of criminals. At the end of the conversation, Enmark says Palme said, ‘Well, Kristin, you can’t get out of the bank. You will have to content yourself that you will have died at your post.’ Enmark was appalled, telling Palme, ‘I don’t want to be a dead hero.’

Finally police teargassed the bank vault and paraded the captors up and down the street to cheers and jeers from the crowd. Enmark watched on, furious at this macho display. When she was told to lie on a stretcher, she refused: ‘I walked in here six and a half days ago, I’m walking out.’

On the radio, Enmark criticised the police, and singled out Bejerot. In response, and without once speaking to her, Bejerot dismissed her comments as the product of a syndrome he made up: ‘Norrmalmstorg syndrome’ (later renamed Stockholm syndrome). The fear Enmark felt towards the police was irrational, Bejerot explained, caused by the emotional or sexual attachment she had with her captors. Bejerot’s snap diagnosis suited the Swedish media; they were suspicious of Enmark, who ‘did not appear as traumatised as she ought to be.’ ‘It is hard to admit,’ wrote one journalist, ‘but the words that come to mind to describe her condition are: fresh and alert.’ Her clarity was, apparently, proof that she was sick.

Four years later, when Enmark was asked to explain her actions, she was indignant. ‘Yes, I was afraid of the police; what is so strange about that? Is it strange that one is afraid of those who are all around, in parks, on roofs, behind corners, in armoured vests, helmets and weapons, ready to shoot?’

In 2008, a review of the literature on Stockholm syndrome found that most diagnoses were made by the media, not psychologists or psychiatrists; that it was poorly researched, and that the scant academic research on it could not even agree on what the syndrome was, let alone how to diagnose it. Allan Wade, who has consulted closely with Enmark, says Stockholm syndrome is ‘a myth invented to discredit women victims of violence’ by a psychiatrist with an obvious conflict of interest, whose first instinct was to silence the woman questioning his authority.

posted by clawsoon at 1:35 PM on June 21, 2020 [26 favorites]

Wow that's exactly what I would expect in a Martin Beck novel.
posted by ovvl at 2:01 PM on June 21, 2020

When I was writing a paper on DID, there was quite a bit of when Freud was still working with Pierre Janet on what was then deemed hysteria. While Janet went on to define the trauma based condition, Freud set back the area of research as he fled for the less treacherous waters of repression. While Freud was many things, he was no dummy and I think it was clear to him that bringing up that the hysterical daughters of his rich and powerful clients were victims of their abuse was not going to keep him in their lucrative good graces. In fact, until men started being diagnosed with DID post war trauma, it was a main part of the general campaign of disregarding women in a paternalistic fashion that they use to call psychology. And medicine. And a lot of things for that matter and not even use to and not just women.

I bet I've written some version of this already because it keeps coming up. The rationalizations of men with power become the means to maintain power and to question their assumptions is to question authority, which means one is "not well."
posted by provoliminal at 8:21 AM on June 23, 2020 [2 favorites]